To:V. I. LAVROV AND YELENA STASOVA[1]

Written:Written December 27, 1902Published:First published in 1928.

      Sent from London to St. Petersburg.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1974,

      Moscow,Volume 34,

      pages126-127.Translated:Clemens DuttTranscription\Markup:D. MorosPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

December 27

Wehave received Vlas’s letter. We shall give you what
help we can. We have long been aware of your plight and
have been thinking of assistance.

Butyou must immediately and without fail write us an accurate account of the
split in St. Petersburg. Answer the following points:
1) Was the Organisation
Committee (the summer one) elected by the League of
Struggle[2]alone
(=committee of intellectuals?) or by the Workers’
Organisation[3]as well?
2) When exactly was it elected?
3) Is there a precise record of
its powers (i.e., what it was charged with doing)?
4) Wherein lay the
irregularity of its election, according to Bouncer and Co.?
5) Were there
delegates from the Workers’ Organisation (two?) in the Organisation Committee
and by whom were they elected?
6) From what has Bouncer been chucked
out—from the Organisation Committee or the Intellectuals’ Committee or
the Workers’ Organisation?
7) What Workers’ Organisation is it that now writes
its declarations? A new one? A reorganised one? when? how?
8) Why have you not
sent us the September leaflet of the Committee of the Workers’ Organisation?
9) Why have you not issued even a handwritten leaflet against them?—or
   sent us a counter-declaration? Not one of their moves should be left
   unanswered.
10) What is this C.C. like now? Is there still an Organisation
   Committee? Are there workers on your side? Why haven’t they formed a
   counter-organisation? Why don’t your workers protest against Bouncer
   workers and their committee?

Sendus immediately new, absolutely unused places of
rendezvous for visitors. Do not give these (our) rendezvous
to anyone else. Seek out beforehand a flat to shelter one
person. Take special care to cover up traces of his contacts
with the old members (Heron and others), who are probably
 being shadowed.

[1]Lavrov,V. I.—a Social-Democrat, Iskrist; from November 1902
was stand-in to Y. D. Stasova on the St. Petersburg Committee in case of
her arrest. In 1903 was in charge of technical arrangements for the
St. Petersburg Committee; conducted correspondence withIskra.

Re: Stasova, see Note 153.  __GLOSSARY_LINK_COMMENT__

[2]Thisrefers to the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation
of the Working Class organised by Lenin in the autumn of 1895. In December
1895 the tsarist government dealt the League a severe blow by arresting a
considerable number of its leading members, Lenin included. The long
absence of the League’s founders, who were exiled to Siberia,
facilitated the prosecution of an opportunist policy on the part of the
“young” members and the Economists, who, from 1897, through the
newspaperRabochaya Mysl, implanted on Russian soil the ideas of
trade-unionism and Bernsteinism. In the second half of 1898 control of the
League passed to the most outspoken of the Economists-theRabochaya
Mysladherents. The old surviving members of the League took part in
preparing and holding the First Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. In the autumn of
1900 the League of Struggle amalgamated with the St. Petersburg
Workers’ Organisation, and was recognised as the St. Petersburg
Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. The struggle between the Iskrists and
Economists in the St. Petersburg Organisation ended in the summer of 1902
with the St. Petersburg Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. adopting anIskrastand.

[3]Workers’Organisation—an organisation of supporters of
Economism, which arose in St. Petersburg in the summer of 1900. In the
autumn of the same year it amalgamated with the League of Struggle for the
Emancipation of the Working Class, and the St. Petersburg Committee of the
R.S.D.L.P. was formed, consisting of two parts: the Committee proper, and
the Committee of the Workers’ Organisation. With theIskratrend gaining the ascendancy in the St. Petersburg Social-Democratic
organisation (1902) the group of Economist-minded Social-Democrats broke
away from the St. Petersburg Committee and again set up an independent
Workers’ Organisation, which existed until the beginning of 1904.